Finding The Right University: Some Resources

Most of the people I help with college applications can be categorized in two ways: those who are fixated on a list of big-name universities which are the ONLY places they can possibly consider applying to, and those who are overwhelmed by the information available and so feel paralyzed and unable to choose. I usually start with the college names they know in both cases and then move on to things they may not have considered, such as this question: Would you want to live there if the university was not located there–a good thing to ask about a place where you are likely to spend at least four years of your life.

In addition to asking questions beyond the status of the university, which in itself is no guarantee of a good experience, it helps to use some of the excellent sources of information that are available today. I have elsewhere discussed some of the books that can help with the college search, but increasingly the best information is available online.

I encourage my clients to use the information sources below to help narrow the search–I offer suggestions and give them information that falls into the gaps, so to speak, but your average searcher for a good university could do much of the work a college counselor might be paid to do (which is one of the reasons I prefer the title “College Advisor” and put most of my time into intellectual and essay development). By sending my clients to the sites below and helping put the information in perspective, I can almost always help my clients with a good, varied list of colleges to pursue. I suggest starting with somewhere around twenty names, then reducing this list to ten or twelve colleges–I used to recommend ten, but in these times, a few more apps is a good idea. So the first step is to empower yourselves, folks. Take charge of your search, starting with the following sources:

If I may compare the college application game to the rackets, the College Board is the Godfather. They have a finger in every pie and control much of the important data. Go to their site, pick a college name and search—this will take you to their Big Future college search engine, which has all kinds of useful data and information—for example, cost estimates are broken down not just by in and out of state but also by on and off campus.

Continuing with my rackets analogy, if the College Board is the Godfather, these guys are the consigliere. Much of the information on the Collegeboard site can be found here, but focused specifically on the hundreds of universities using the Common App. Not quite as detailed as the collegeboard, but you are most likely going to set up an account here and you might as well check out what they offer.

If the College Board is the Godfather, this is the Oracle of Delphi. This is a federal website and it is built right on the source of education statistics for the U.S. The site is a function of the Institute of Education Sciences, which is essentially the data clearing house for education facts nationally, among other things. Graphics windows that open up when you search are not flashy, but the layout is very easy to use and clear, and you can see very detailed breakdowns of costs from tuition to room and board to an estimate of extra expenses, as well as test scores and pretty much any other statistic you might want, though some of the numbers may be a year behind. Go now if you haven’t already. They are the data set, really, that everybody else uses.

If your school or district has not purchased this service, then you are only going to be frustrated in reading this; if so, convert your frustration to political action and advocate that the board or school purchase Naviance. Naviance is an institutional software package and service, meaning that it can be purchased by school districts but not by individuals. There are legitimate institutional reasons for this limitation. If your district does use Naviance, it will perform most of the functions of a traditional college counselor by providing a highly accurate picture of your chances of gaining admission to a particular university—this feedback is specific to your profile and to your school’s profile. This includes scattergram reports updated annually for your school. See Cappex, below, for more on that. Of course, Naviance can’t read your essays and evaluate them, nor is it very good at figuring out if you are going to get an athletic or music scholarship, to name a couple of very important admissions factors. But if your school does have Naviance, Congratulations! Go see your counselor posthaste. If you do not have access to Naviance, the two sources above and those I list below can help you approximate Naviance. In any case, any prediction made by Naviance or any other service is a based on data, in other words is based on the past, and the past is becoming less and less reliable as a predictor of the future except for the general truth that every year it is becoming harder to gain admissions to most selective universities.

Cappex is trying to be a free version of Naviance, with a dose of attitude. They even have scattergrams for the schools they discuss. Scattergrams are xy graphical representations of results on student applications, with GPA and ACT/SAT score as the two factors represented. This means that, like all of these predictive tools, we can’t factor in essays, talents, et al, and we don’t know exactly how large the sample is for the Cappex data either, but they do claim to show the results of all of their members who applied, and this number is definitely growing. There are many other nice features here—their profiles of universities, which include the scattergram, are reasonably informative and can quickly give you an idea of where you fall among applicants–the most selective unis are shifted way up toward the top right in the scattergrams . . .

A good statistical site with a lot of data, presented in a straightforward fashion. It is searchable and has statistical info like that offered by the College Board, et al. It’s not clear where they intend to go with this site—it was developed by Harvard undergraduates for the HackHarvard web app incubator–but it offers good info in an easy-to-use format.

This is a Facebook app that works with around 1,500 schools, matching your profile with the schools and giving you a prediction of your chances to be admitted. This is a numbers only site—GPA, SAT/ACT—so essays, talents and other factors are not weighed. This is true of all the software or apps which predict admissions chances, though Naviance, above, has more specific information and theoretically should be a bit more accurate. Still, Splash is worth a look as you search. It will give you a score range from 1-100 and chances are calculated from “fair” to “great.’ They claim to have a 90-97% predictions. Keep in mind that you are providing private information—while they have no plans at the moment for using your data, they have not “determined” the long-term use of the data. In addition to the calculator for predicting admissions, they have a question and answer function and a blog on topics related to college and college admissions. As with college confidential, almost none of the information offered by individuals can be validated and you are probably wasting your time reading a bunch of responses which purport to offer “insider’ info.

This is a participant driven site—think of it as the Yelp of universities. Or you might think of it as an attempt to create a college student Borg. Good for some idea of aspects of your potential colleges that are not readily clear in statistics—social life, for example—but I always wonder what the basis for comparison is—how do you really know how to rate the social life at your school against that of another? Without, say, attending both? An epistemological mystery, but anecdotally this site is useful for things like reviews of dorm life to what the stereotypes of students at the school are, or is. They also (claim to) rate schools against each other.

Can Give Interesting Information But Probably Not Worth The Time

College Confidential

I like most of the “official’ info, by which I mean the commentary the adults in charge offer, but the various chat threads and discussions of how to finesse an app to a particular school are pretty much sliced lunchmeat. The discussion threads do have occasional tidbits of good information, but it’s like looking for a pearl in the tanks of a sewage plant. Buy a rabbit’s foot instead of spending time reading the chat(ter). The people who work at universities in or with insight into admissions have frequently lambasted the information offered here, with good reason.

In addition to working as an editor and college advisor, I have taught at the high school and college levels, including twenty years of experience in Advanced Placement English Literature, which was where I first began helping students with admissions to elite universities. After working with applications officials at multiple universities, ... Continue reading →